


Masks

by pierrette



Category: Harlots (TV)
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-03
Updated: 2020-12-03
Packaged: 2021-03-10 00:28:33
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Underage
Chapters: 1
Words: 553
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27855953
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/pierrette/pseuds/pierrette
Summary: Charlotte reflects on how she gets through a day.
Relationships: Charlotte wells - Relationship, Lydia Quigley & Charlotte Wells
Comments: 3
Kudos: 4





	Masks

Waking up in the luxury of Golden Square is a sensation that she, even after all of these weeks, has not yet become used to. Would she ever?  
It’s a far cry from her narrow berth in Covent Garden, rough woolen blankets scratching her face and the dim clatters of so many girls dressing in the confined space. It’s different even to George Howard’s town house, where she had awoken each day to either his plaintive cries for release or to Haxby’s growls of disapproval at the sight of her.

Here, there’s silence. She had longed for peace at her Ma’s – just a break from the incessant squabbling and the groans of satisfaction. At George’s, she had wished every day for the idiot to lose his voice, that she might not be bored with his petulance. She’d reveled in the peace afforded to her here, but as time has worn on, peace has become silence, has become oppressing. She’s found too much that her thoughts come unbidden far too much in the silence.

She takes her time getting out of bed, ears straining to hear the plinking music drifting up from the main room. She hums it tunelessly under her breath. Lucy were the talented one as far as music were concerned. The only thing she could play was the male instrument. She snorts at her own joke and washes her face at her bureau. 

Making up is perhaps one of her favourite times of the day. The face that greets her in the mirror each morning is that of a stranger. Flushed cheeks, bright eyes alive with hope and plans of revenge set in a face surrounded by a nest of wild, dark curls. Not a stranger. She knows this girl too well. She’d rush headlong into denouncing Lydia if Charlotte let her. But Charlotte knows that this girl will lead her to trouble in the end. It was her fault that she was here, that Daniel was in America, that Sir George – 

There’s something vulnerable about the girl in the mirror. Perhaps she looks innocent? The girl’s lips twitch at the thought. No, definitely not innocent. Mischievous, then? That’s better. The reflection grins back at her, teeth laughing and eyes glinting. She has pulled some tricks in her time. She can fake an orgasm like no other girl she knows, and is clever enough to enchant any amount of men into believing her love is true. That makes her snort again.  
“Daft.”  
Is she as daft as they? Her Ma had thought her daft. Charlotte supposes that she is, really. She’s not yet learned to shut her mouth. 

Charlotte picks up her brush and begins to stroke the heavy white paint across her cheek. With each stroke, the girl in the mirror becomes more and more hidden until Charlotte emerges. She blackens her eyebrows back to their natural depths, rouges her cheeks and her lips and her mask is complete. There’s no show of the real girl, who has opinions and thoughts and a mind of her own. Charlotte smiles a carefully practiced smile. Her culls (or Lydia) wouldn’t guess that below the carefully coiffed hair and the doll-like makeup, there was a real woman with hopes and dreams, fears and hatreds. And that was exactly how Charlotte Wells liked it.


End file.
